Hate it.
But the entire Oklahoma Panhandle is so dry,
everything is going up in flames.
Everything too ready to ignite.
Last week
the school caught fire.
Damage was light,
on account of it being caught early.
Most kids joked about it next day,
but it terrified me.
I could hardly go back in the building.
And this week
three boxcars
in the train yard
burned to ash.
Jim Goin and Harry Kesler
spotted the fire,
and that was a miracle
considering the fierceness of the dust storm
at the time.
The fire boys
tore over,
but they couldn’t put the blaze out without water,
and water is exactly what they didn’t have.
So they separated the burning cars
away from any little thing that might catch
if the flames hopped.
It was all they talked about at school.
The dust blew,
they say,
so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,
but the flames,
crazy in the wind,
licked away at the wooden frames of the three box
cars,
until nothing remained but warped metal,
and twisted rails,
scorched dirt, and
charred ties.
No one talks about fire
right to my face.
They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.
April 1935